Fashion is about the only ad category in the print edition that looks healthy. Visual arts reviews used to be surrounded by notices paid for by art galleries. Now that Friday section is lucky to have a small promo from one of the auction houses. Other sections of the newspaper are even more ad-deprived. Sports and Metropolitan commonly have none. The New York Times Sunday Magazine, once fattened with messages from General Motors and Coca-Cola, is an editorial skeleton without commercial muscle. Only the perfect-bound T has flesh on its bones.
Category: visual
Construction Workers In Egypt Stumble Upon A Previously Unknown Sphinx
While some news outlets compared the discovery to a second version of the monumental Great Sphinx of Giza, the new find seems to be more of a country cousin. But in a nation struggling to rebuild its tourism industry, every new antiquity helps.
Want To See The World’s Wildest New Church Architecture? Head To South India
There have been Christian churches in what is now the state of Kerala for at least 1,600 years, but the ones that have been built there in recent decades are a wild combination of Le Corbusier modernism, tropical Art Deco, SoCal commercial, and maybe even some Bollywood and Vegas thrown in. (slideshow)
The Ethics Of Art Photography: What Do Those Behind The Camera Owe Those In Front Of It?
Journalist Alina Cohen looks at four photographers’ projects – street hustlers in L.A., high schoolers in a Southern town where the proms were still segregated, victims of the 1963 Birmingham (AL) church bombing, and small-town Irish teens on the day before their 18th birthday – and talks to the photographers about their obligations to their subjects.
Banksy Road Sign Appears And Disappears Within A Day
The sign, a pictograph for a road crossing showing elderly people being carried by children, was installed in the English town of Clevedon (not far from the secretive artist’s presumed hometown, Bristol) sometime early Friday. By Friday evening it was gone. There’s no indication of whether the artist, authorities, or vandals removed it.
Prosecutor Ends Investigation Into Documenta Finances
The investigation into Annette Kulenkampff’s financial management of Documenta was prompted by a legal complaint issued by Kassel city council members of the right-wing Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany). The prosecutor found no evidence of embezzlement, a statement says.
The Negro League Baseball Museum Was Severely Vandalized – But Donations Have Poured In
In June, vandals cut a water pipe to the Kansas City (Missouri) museum – which is in the building where the Negro Leagues were founded in the 1920s. The vandalism wasn’t discovered for hours, and by that time, water had caused more than half a million dollars in damages. The museum president says “Small contributions are coming from virtually every corner of the country. … It’s lifted everybody’s spirits.”
These Architects Turned Their Office – Logically, They Say – Into A Working Farm
And it’s in London – as in, in the city. “Many architects have a yearning for the primitive hut, but few can boast pigs outside the window of their office. ‘It does lead to some awkward phone calls. … Clients ask what the grunting noise is in the background.'”
Restoring Some Painted-Over Banksy Murals In Glasgow
The murals were part of the artist’s early work, in a 2001 exhibition. “Six years later, and long after Banksy had established himself as an international artist, the murals were covered with grey emulsion during refurbishment work at the nightclub.” Oops. Now, carefully, they’re being uncovered again.
Making Instagram Art That Owes More To Horror Than To Conventional Notions Of Beauty
It’s not all make-up tutorials, beauty influencers, and traditionally contoured faces over there anymore. Instead, sci-fi and horror are having their Instagram day, with various accounts “marrying the macabre and the glamorous. They have antecedents in the work of Alexander McQueen, 1990s club kids, Cindy Sherman (currently posting eerie self-portraits on her own Instagram account) and Lady Gaga.”